| OCR Text |
Show 1870.] REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON NEW ARANEIDEA. 743 Maxillee moderately long, strong, rounded at their extremities, a little curved, and greatly inclined over the labium, which is small, short, and subtriangular or somewhat semicircular, with the apex slightly pointed. PHYCUS BREVIS, n. sp. (Plate XLIV. fig. 9.) Female, immature, length 1 line. The general aspect of this Spider is remarkable, owing to its short hunched appearance, the caput being large and elevated, while the cephalothorax, as a whole, is small, sloping rapidly and continuously in a slightly hollow line from the summit of the caput to its hinder margin; its colour is deep brown, and the caput is furnished with long curved spiny bristles. The eyes are rather large, nearly equal in size, and form a large crescent; the clypeus is high, slightly prominent below, and exceeds in height the greatest breadth of the crescent formed by the eyes; they are seated on black tubercles, those of the lateral pairs are contiguous to each other; those of the two intermediate pairs form very nearly a square, the fore side being slightly the shortest. The eyes of the hind central pair are rather further from each other than each is from the lateral on its side; those of the front row are equidistant from each other, and apparently larger than those of the hinder row. The legs are short, strong, tapering, and laterigrade; the difference in their relative length is very little ; those of the fourth pair appeared to be slightly the longest, and those of the third pair slightly the shortest, while those of the first and second pairs were almost, if not quite, equal. The colour of the legs is pale yellow, conspicuously blotched and banded with black ; they are furnished with hairs, bristles, and long slender spines; and each tarsus ends with three curved black claws. Palpi short, similar in colour and armature to the legs, and terminating with a curved black claw. Falces rather small, but strongish, vertical and conical; their colour is yellow-brown, banded with a darker hue towards their extremities. The maxillee and labium are similar in colour to the cephalothorax, as also the sternum, which is heart-shaped, rather convex and glossy. Abdomen large, convex above, broad and rounded in front, pointed behind, and projects greatly over the base of the cephalothorax; the texture of the cuticle is strong; it is of a metallic silvery nature on the upperside; the sides, as also the fore and undersides, are deep brown; the underside has a central somewhat cruciform silvery patch ; the upperside is charged with a large elongate-triangular deep brown marking, which does not quite touch the brown fore side, its margins are irregularly notched or dentate, and its acute point terminates just above the spinners; this marking is mottled with minute silvery dots behind, and has an inverted T-shaped metallic silvery marking on its fore part; on either side of the brown triangular marking are a few small dark brownish elongate spots. The whole of the upperside of the abdomen is thinly covered with small PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1870, No. L. |
